Japanese otaku have fought back against Chinese propaganda by turning the favourite anti-Japanese insult of the Chinese into a moe character.

Some explanation is in order – “Japanese devils” (literally, “Japanese devil children”) is a traditional Chinese racist insult towards the Japanese, having come into common currency during WWII and been maintained by anti-Japanese propaganda ever since.

In Chinese it is 日本鬼子 / rìběn guǐzi (read as “nihon onigo” in Japanese), meaning simply “Japanese devils” (incidentally, 鬼子/guǐzi on its own is also the traditional “foreign devils” insult Chinese apply to westerners in general).

With the anti-Japanese riots in China, the term has seen plenty of recent usage.

Japanese artists on 2ch decided to use moe to appropriate the term and “turn the Chinese into moetards,” creating “Hi-no-Moto Oniko” based on an alternative reading of the 日本鬼子 characters – the characters for Japan, 日本, mean “origin of the sun” (Hi no Moto) and 鬼子 can be rendered into a female name, “Oniko.”

Chinese confronted with these lovely creatures are perplexed:

I didn’t think it would turn out like this… I just don’t understand that country.

Damn, just damn. Japan is a dangerous country. Perhaps we should admit our loss.

We boo and jeer them and their response is a moe character… We’re helpless before them.

Riben Guizi is a moe character!? What can we call them now? Japs? Creepy otaku?

Related to this is the “little Japan” (小日本 / xiǎo rìběn) epithet used disparagingly by contemporary Chinese Japan-haters to refer to Japan – this also gives 小日本鬼子 (“little Japanese devils”), which has been co-opted into the devastatingly cute “little Oniko”:

More fruits of the “Let’s make Hi-no-Moto Oniko into a moe character and turn all those racist Chinese into moetards” project:

This is a much more interesting response from 2ch, normally I’d expect tons of insult trading and a DDOS war. Guess China’s slow international links don’t allow. Is this then the new ‘Cyber-War’?
Also internet needs a new rule – if exists -> moe of it exists.

Wtf is with this conflict. I get why they hate the Japanese (WWII and stuff) but seeing as this is a Japanese-commited site, I wouldnt trust half the stuff that has to do with the situation between China and Japan on here. I wouldnt trust a China news network either. Then again, im on here and not on there, so many Im a bit biased? I dunno. Either way, this seems like a biased reaction toward the situation.

This is what I love about the japanese culture, obliviously satyrical to comment and criticism alike. Give them an insult and they change that into a moeblob, how great is that!!! If there’s one thing that they share alike with the foreigners that they so hate would be this cynical satyrism, the absolute ability to absorb all forms of attacks rained down at them and spewing them out in the form of torrents and torrents of moeblob, thanks to their unlimited source of otaku. (Now don’t tell me you don’t agree with that!!!)

(literally, “Japanese devil children”)
Usually “zi” at the end of a two-syllable word is just a noun marker. Ferinstance chopsticks are “kuaizi”, this doesn’t mean ‘chopstick children’ but just ‘chopsticks’. a duck is a “yazi” ‘duck’ (any age), a building is a “fangzi” etc. It hasn’t really meant ‘child’ since classical Chinese.

Love the Japanese response — but as China continues to use nationalism to release tension from its suppression of wages and distract from increasing economic inequality, I worry that moe won’t be enough to prevent violence. . . Let’s hope that’s not the case.

I agree. As a half-french/half-british student in an american school I often get the “cheese-eating surrender monkey” jokes. This thread has inspired me to create “Cheasum: the adventures of the cheese-eating monkey”. It’s the story of a mutant monkey, sporting a beret and feasting on smelly french cheese, who has to fight a multitude of opponents in a mortal kombat style championship. Thank you Japan for showing the world the only true way to fight racism!

I wonder, did they agree to certain common elements when designing these various versions? The horns seem obvious for a devil-girl but I notice most of them also have clothing decorated with Japanese maple leaves, the Noh mask, and the naganata.

Actually when Japanese use 鬼 as 1 word, it often means old Japanese monster, big stout man with one or two horns, red skin, and wearing only a tiger fur (can you see some girls wearing tiger fur?). I’m not sure but maybe ogre is most alike.. or do you feel it’s more like devil?

I don’t get it, the dirt japs made a character based off the chinese insult “Japanese Devil Children”. We’re calling you the spawn of a demon and you want to embrace it? Hey I’m fine with it actually, I’m glad the Japs realize they’re worthless pieces of shit that came from a demon’s ass. FINALLY after years of conflict the japs have realize they’re nothing but evil little demon shit spawns.

2Chan thinks they are right both times, and considering they are actually doing something (versus weeaboos who demand other people do their work for them), it would be more likely that 2Chan are the parental figures (which bothers me greatly).

Hnnnnnnnnnnggggg. So much beautiful traditional Japanese clothing designs. Japan really does know everyone’s weakness. …Can I haz a male version of Oniko, Japan? Or am I gonna have to insult you for that? Cuz I’ll do it.

Chinese otaku who commented on the issue and said to be “perplexed” by Oniko are never anti-Japanese to begin with. Heh I have already seen an ecchi Oniko doujin released by them. Talk about speed and efficiency…

On the other hand I highly doubt the extreme nationalists will give a shit to Japanese 2D drawings. They just treat them like ukiyo-e anyway and will hardly be able to see anything moe out of them.

Still, kudos to the 2ch for doing something more productive than throwing random insults at gaijin.

Unfortunately black people never made the word lovable nor excepted being called nigger by non blacks. By saying that only they themselves could use the word they just further segregate themselves. 日本鬼子 now is unoffensive when said by anyone.

Hell, I just typed it “hinomotooniko” without thinking. Even though it doesn’t automatically turn to those characters that’s how it’s properly pronounced now.

You know what’s funny? As much as I’ve seen many here and those of 2ch complain about the surge of moe blob anime and such….This clearly proves why it came to be so. Have to admit though. Some of these are pretty awesome concepts.

Well whatever, this will all blow over sooner or later like it usually does. This just further proves one thing. When the Japanese are faced with problems, they run away to the power of moe. Conclusion? Still as effective as ever lol.

haha all they do is talk shit but can’t even start anything because they’re army is too weak and china could wipe them out like an instinct if the US didn’t get involved. i guess moe is the only weak shit they have for an insult? im not chinese but this shit is weak.

Because people, some humans might be smart, or even geniuses, but humanity as a whole is utterly retarded, its a fact of the universe, we are dumb and retarded and destroying ourselves and the planet slowly, hopefully we can at least solve one of those two problems before it finally blows up in our face.

i dunt get it they showing same shit over and over agian just in different poses -.- how is china crushed? the comments are obviously in sarcasm -.- did the japanese every wonder if this can really spark anger? over some islands that will sink when ocean levels rise? if this leads 2 some sorta violence japan has no army 2 back it up its fked and chinas gonna have america breathing down its neck

If Japan transform “Nip” and “Jap” to moe chara, I wouldn’t be surprised.
Something like “Nip-tan” or “Jap-tan”…
And Konippon-tan is confirmed loli chara…unfortunately…
Oh wait we still have ロリ巨乳体格(short-but-big-boob fisic).

And China…Really, who the f* would be enraged when called “ghost” or even “oni”?
Are you trying to call japanese as something subhuman?
Facepalm. You called them “superhuman”.
Didn’t you heard about oni-musha?

“GuiZi” is not really “Devils” but more “Deamons” in the Chinese language and culture.
China has no imagination about the christian devil, but a shitload of evil and bloodthirsty deamons coming from the underworld to burn, pillage and terrorize the living.
And that, what the Japanese díd, and still lot of Japanese right-wingers agreed to, is pretty much fitting to the traditional Chinese imagination about those evil spirits and deamons…
This terms depicts a being, that does things no ordinary human mind can think of, things that are so terrifying and inhuman, that it has to be something out of this world.

Watch this, and tell for yourself wether the Japanese should be called “Deamons” or not:

Hey, stupid, quit the racist talk and do something productive in your own life before I become tempted to physically hunt you down, rip off your pants and then hang the pants on a public school’s flagpole while photographing you in your underwear!

I agree, Japan and America should go to hell for what they did. But China should be the first to go to hell for the shit they did to their own people.
A nation that betrays it’s own people through oppression, murder, torture is a thousand times worse than a nation that brings such upon another.

And the Americans should just move back to Europe while enslaving themselves to the Africans.
And the Turks should give Asia Minor back to the
Greeks so they could re-establish the Byzantine Empire.
Oh, and your ancestral one-celled organism ate MY one-celled ancestor’s plancton it had been savoring for a long time, thus causing my one-celled ancestor conciderable grief and suffering. It would be only just that you get yourself slain in a very unconfortable manner to repent for this crime.

…I could go on, but I don’t think that I have to labour my point any more.

I´d kill every single of those creatures. If after watching the japanese anime you think little cute girls with horns or weapons are anything other but terrifyingly violent, merciless and dangerous creatures, so different from humans that we cant exist together – you know shit about japanese anime.

I didn’t think it would turn out like this… I just don’t understand that country.

Damn, just damn. Japan is a dangerous country. Perhaps we should admit our loss.

We boo and jeer them and their response is a moe character… We’re helpless before them.

Riben Guizi is a moe character!? What can we call them now? Japs? Creepy otaku??”

Anonymous Japs on 2ch pretending to be Chinese. Chinese doesn’t have alternative readings anyway. It would be like someone tell you that you can read “pizza” as “shitstain” and laugh about it. Not in our language…

Yes because vivisection, rape, murder and other war crimes are so “cute”. I am sure becuase it was due to a lower level of intelligence after all most of the modern world has gone past such frivolties.

Like the neanderthals before Japan remains mentally and socially unevolved.

Well, Japan can’t be forgiven for that stuff, sure. But have you forgotten what just about every other civilization/country has done these past something-hundred thousand years? What japan did then was pillage, murder and rape Chinese cities and their citizens during WWII. But no country hasn’t done that. It’s just Japan arrived at the party dressed in last year’s fashion sense, and got nasty looks for not being “in”.

those so called atrocity by the japs duirng WWII were still practiced by most of the “civilized” world just a few decades before in WWI. the rest of the world aern’t that much better than the japanese to be honest. including the chinese.

also the fact chinese got raped to hell by the tiny island nation was fucking laughable to this day.

well, at least on good thing could come from all this. It seems to be sparking something like a national pride that isn’t limited only to the right wing conservatives, in the otherwise indifferent citizens of japan.

xD why would they draw something so cool lookng as an insult I mean the devil drawing looked awesome if it was gonna be an insult then make the damn thing ugly like the fat red devils you may see in asian mythology.

Btw 子 doesn’t always have to mean “child.” In 日本鬼子 it’s just ‘Japanese Devil.’ 鬼 pretty much covers any evil creature though from trolls to ghosts to demons.

iirc Japanese were also described as 倭寇, something to the effect of ‘midget pirates’ or ‘dwarf raiders’ waaaay back in the, I dunno, 1400s? 1500s? Anyways back then it seemed notable to the Han ethnicity that Japanese were somehow physically smaller and had a tradition of piracy up and down the coast of China.
Of course, 小日本 is purely an expression of belittlement, I don’t think it comments on their height.

Anyways, it’s pretty stupid but Asians have a bad habit of keeping these eternal grudges. When will they grow up?

Wait a second, she was SOO BADASS that she managed to make the Government go “SHUT AND TAKE MY MONEY” at her because they were fed up with fighting her and losing(also I assume a huge fleet of experienced Pirates is a pretty nice looking thing to add to the Navy)

For the record, though I have no idea what they were labeled, there were Chinese pirates back in the day. In fact, the Chinese were arguably the most successful at it, at least amongst the Asian cultures, seeing as one of the MOST successful pirates in history was a Chinese woman. Yes, woman.

Her name was (well, is usually written in English text as) Ching Shih. Not only was she an excellent pirate captain, but at her height, she controlled tens of thousands of men in a whole fleet – a fleet so good it beat the actual Chinese navy. Repeatedly. In fact, she was undefeated – they were so sick of fighting her and losing that they actually bought her fleet from her and paid her to retire. Her fleet was absorbed into the actual Chinese navy, and she settled down to run a gambling house – one of the only notorious pirates in history to successfully retire I might add.

Sure, she might be an exception to the rule – but she was Chinese, and she was not just a pirate, but one of the world’s most successful ones.

So, you know. It’s not like there were no Chinese pirates, ever. 😛

And “80k men” is kind of a lot of pirates, even if we’re just counting Ching Shih’s armada by itself…

they used to call gaijin as 洋鬼子 as well. the 鬼子 does not necessary means devil, its more like scolding others as “bitches” or “dumbass”, its just to call others by not using the word “人” which mean people. the chinese has a way of thinking that they are superior so other races are not like themselves so they call other races 鬼子.

Well to be fair, at the time the phrase became popular was when foreigners first arrived to China in mass, which was during their last dynasty. Where they were getting exploited by the outsiders like crazy (opium trade, etc). The inability of the weak imperial court to act against foreign oppression means calling foreigner insulting names was pretty much the only satisfaction ordinary Chinese can get in those days.

i dont think kappa would work, because of the shell on the back, as for the other ones, they seam like they could fit, still would love to see the moe for nigger though, know its there but it would have to be more than just a cute black woman.

Hah, I love fear. The anon above was using the words in descriptive context and still was downvoted 🙂 Upvote for you for saying them in a non-racist context that apparently people don’t understand that it wasn’t actually in a racist context.

For some reason, I think of ‘wet back’ as some type of loli Kappa somehow. That’s what came to mind initially. And ‘Chink’ could be a clutzy armored warrior girl with chinks in the armor. Cracker could be… hmm… besides the obvious of a girl munching crackers like Chouji, it could be a girl who cracks things like Bender bends things. As for nigger, that word is based off a mispronunciation of negro for black, so it doesn’t have a dual meaning, so that’s a tough one.

There was a great Code Geass Dojinshi where Lelouche used his “other” Geass being his nutsacks and dick! Any female sees it and they become Uber Whores who “convinces” everyone they lay~ including the fairer sex by growing a dick. Needless to write, Lelouche DOMINATED the WORLD in months!

A Doujin with that Moe pulling something like that would be hilarious! chinese shota (china) gets arse raped by Moe (Nippon)~ Economic turmoil there, but damn it’ll be funny!

Still, even if China’s economy becomes the best in the world their money won’t grant them genius like what we’re witnessing. The way Japan’s netizens work together one ups even communism’s ideal of people power.

They really should adapt this concept into an anime. Good show, @artistsinquestion. This is positively brilliant. All hate-based sentiments need to be fought through propaganda-sarcastic art. Really do like.

you should check where are ppl come from while you check the works on pixiv. Then you may notice there are pics drawn by Chinese in this post. Chinese are making good anime as well, but those anime fans are making them, they won’t show those on TV. I agree ZeroShadow’s point, Chinese are only showing some stupid anime.

I should laugh right away at this but because it utterly ingenious or just plain awesome, i took my hat off literally before proceeding to laugh this away. Japan, you ARE the greatest moe country that god allowed to exist! May god be with you while fighting that communist fascist and land-taking bastard of a country.

The people all over the world might be surprised this counterattack against China. Don’t get upset. Japanese are also surprised.(like me!) ‘鬼’ means ‘Devil’, ‘Ghost’ or something ominous in China bat in Japan, it means something strong that is not always ominous. The difference of ‘Kanji’ between China and Japan may make such a project possible.
Japanese turn their irritation into moe with humour, and otaku live in around the world can get the work(mainly an illustration). Oh, there are no sacrifices. Brilliant!

This is why japan will always be ahead of the rest of Asia. Give them anger, hatred, violence, threats…and they will turn it into something beautiful and adorable. Korea and china should learn from this. There’s a reason why there are millions of weeaboos yet no one admires m odern chinese culture.

Which means millions of ignorant, bias and hypocritical ass hats that has OCD towards anime/manga industry who believe Japan can never do wrong in their heads. Seriously weeaboo’s isn’t the best example to use when you look at the definition…You might aswell just have said there’s a reason why there are millions of Justin Bieber or Twighlight fans…However I can’t deny that this is a nice way to say “Take That!”. Would I say it’s original? No. Do I say it’s still epic? Yes.

Japan is no exception to having it’s fair share of racist biggotry. 2ch and niconico should have been obvious examples. Then there’s Uyoku and friends. Plus thier general xenophobia. With that said. Japan. The Original Internet Troll. The only nation probably in the world to have more people per capita living in their bedrooms trolling everyone and each other to raise self esteem than other nations lulz.

In Asia, Korean popular culture eclipses Japanese popular culture. Even the biggest Japanese boybands have to move concert dates because they don’t want to have to compete with the more popular Korean DBSK.

Too bad Korean boy bands songs majorly and horribly suck. No, seriously. They basically are nothing but just repetitive and badly composed techno melody along with auto-tuned voices of the guys “singing”… or rather said; raping. And here I’m wondering how on earth could Wondergirls and their seriously overrated Nobody song became a world phenomenon.

If anything, I light years prefer their ballads since those were the good stuff the Koreans are really great with.

BODDOLE ZER: Even I do not know much, except that it means; “Creative activity that is not fighting.” Chinatradi Communist Party did not teach me anything about “Culture” nor “Moe”… except for the one of the Ten Commandments of the anti-Japanese education program — “Never become involved with Otaku.”

FOLOMO: Moe is “Culture”?

BODDOLE ZER: A lethal weapon, as well. In my many battles to propagate pro-Chintradi on the internet, I have not learned much of the “Culture” of Japanese otaku. Except that “culture” can be very powerful. This “Moe” may have the power to collapse our CCP’s one-party regime.

KRIDANIK: Such power?

CHINTRADI PLA OFFICER: Power that deprives us of our will to fight?

BODDOLE ZER: Yes.

KRIDANIK: What’s this?

BODDOLE ZER: Video clip… a “Fragment of Moe” I’ve captured through the Great Firewall.

The term riben guizi came out well before Communism in China, though. Hatred of the Japanese probably stems more from a long-standing grudge of the Japanese unapologetic excessive abuse and massacres during the war. (Think Jews and the Holocaust, but if the Germans later pretended that it never happened. That’s the mindset of a lot of older Chinese nowadays.)

Also, somehow I don’t think rabid ultranationalism in a democracy is any better.

Nationalism is never good. It’s basically hooliganism, only that the object of their obsessive worship isn’t a soccer team, but their own country. And instead of bar brawls, they are having brawls on the streets.